Urban Ashes, a pioneer in the urban wood industry, has partnered with the city of Ann Arbor to launch a municipal wood recycling program called Circular UrbanWood Triconomy (CUT Model).
The collaboration prioritizes local economies, reduces municipal costs and landfill waste, increases carbon sequestration, develops local wood resources, and creates career and business opportunities.
The CUT Model seeks to maximize the potential of urban wood, including trees removed not for their wood value but due to age, disease, or storm damage existing across urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Each year, the U.S. misses the opportunity to recover an estimated 46 million metric tons of potential urban lumber, according to Urban Ashes. The lost wood resource, primarily chipped, burned, or landfilled, could instead produce more 7 billion board feet of quality urban lumber. That equals the volume of about 16 Empire State Buildings, the company states.
This also results in lost carbon sequestration of an estimated 5.6 million tons of carbon and releases around 20.55 million tons of CO2e emissions. Capturing 40 percent of this capacity could be equivalent to planting approximately 136 million trees and growing them for 10 years in terms of carbon and CO2e impact.
The CUT Model offers an alternative by converting these trees into quality urban wood and durable wood products, sustaining carbon sequestration and increasing their value.
Urban Ashes states it is active in more than 25 cities in the U.S. Through the company’s partnership with Ann Arbor, the city is expected to sequester between an estimated 20 and 40 metric tons of carbon through this initiative, preventing the release of 73 to 147 metric tons of CO2e.
The reduction equates to the impact of planting and growing about 1,213 to 2,425 saplings over a decade, more than doubling the effect of Ann Arbor’s annual planting of 1,000 saplings.
Urban Ashes leverages decades of urban wood industry expertise to build public-private partnerships with communities nationwide, offering sustainable solutions that transform their fallen trees — typically slated for chipping, firewood, or landfills — into high-quality local urban wood products with local economic, environmental, and social benefits.
Through the CUT Model, Urban Ashes creates scalable systems while supporting small local mills, local manufacturers, and communities foundational to the urban wood industry.
Utilizing advanced tracking software and established industry standards, they maximize urban wood utilization, contribute to carbon sequestration, reduce CO2e emissions, and establish new markets, local career paths, local jobs, and local business opportunities for our formerly incarcerated individuals and justice-impacted youth.
For more information, visit urbanashes.com/.
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